


what's new, pussycat?

by jemmasimmmons



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Slow Burn, accidental kitten aquisition, cat owners!fs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-02 11:49:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15795918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jemmasimmmons/pseuds/jemmasimmmons
Summary: "The girl tilts her head to one side, causing her light brown hair to pillow at her cheek. ‘Are you leaving a bag of cat food on my doorstep?’Fitz glances down at the giant bag of dry biscuits he’d just put down.‘Uh, yeah.’‘With a note attached saying “child support”?’"When Fitz's mum's cat gets Jemma's pregnant, he feels the need to make amends. A cat owners AU.





	what's new, pussycat?

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by this tweet/tumblr post (http://squidyword.tumblr.com/post/177316538607/imagine-your-otp) and requested by shay! shout out to the purina website for all their information on cat pregnancy and birth. i've spared you all the more grisly details. you're welcome.
> 
> i'm on tumblr @jeemmasimmons and on twitter @jemmasimmmons!

 

 

Leopold Fitz is pacing back and forth in his mother’s living room, pausing at regular intervals to glare at the fat ginger cat lazing on the nearby sofa.

‘This,’ he tells him severely, ‘is all your fault.’

Whiskers gives a bored yawn.

‘If you’d just been able to keep it in your pants,’ Fitz continues, ‘this would never have happened. Why Mum didn’t ever get you neutered, I’ll never know. Would have saved me a lot of trouble if she _had_.’

Whiskers rolls onto his back and presents Fitz with his belly, but Fitz crosses his arms grimly. There would be no head rubs today.

‘You’ve done a bad thing,’ he says to the cat. ‘Not very gentlemanly at all.’

With another yawn, Whiskers closes his eyes and falls asleep. Clearly, he does not care one bit about whether his behaviour had been gentlemanly or not.

Shaking his head, Fitz resumes his pacing until he hears the sound of a car pulling up next to his mother’s house. Hurriedly, he crosses the room to the window and twitches back the lace curtain.

On the street below, he watches as his mum’s new neighbour, a girl about his own age, gets out of her car and opens the backseat. She pulls out a cat carry-case first and then a large plastic bag with the pet shop logo on the front. Fitz watches guiltily as she struggles to keep both pieces of luggage under control as she locks the car.

She’d only have needed a bag that big if she’d had to pick up supplies for her newly pregnant cat.

With a groan, Fitz lets the curtain fall back into place and sits down heavily on the windowsill. He glares again at Whiskers, purring contentedly on the sofa cushions, and momentarily feels a burst of irritation towards his mum for leaving him cat-sitting for six months. He is pretty sure Whiskers would never have dared do anything like this if she’d still been here.

When the cat’s away, Fitz thinks, the mice will play. Except this time, it was the cat who had played.

Through the window, he can hear the girl chatting to her own cat as she carries her up the front path to the door. Fitz raises his eyes to the ceiling and shakes his head, momentarily forgetting that he himself had been talking to Whiskers only moments before.

He waits until he hears her front door slam shut, then makes up his mind on what he ought to do.

‘You,’ he says sternly to Whiskers, ‘owe me. Understand?’

Whiskers does not hear him. He adjusts his head on the cushion and gives a soft purr, as though he has never owed anyone anything before in his life.

 

Fitz is just straightening up, dusting off his hands and preparing to turn around, when the door in front of him opens. His heart jumps as he finds himself face to face with his mother’s new next-door neighbour.

‘Hello.’

‘Um, hi,’ he mutters, horrified at being caught in the act.

The girl tilts her head to one side, causing her light brown hair to pillow at her cheek. ‘Are you leaving a bag of cat food on my doorstep?’

Fitz glances down at the giant bag of dry biscuits he’d just put down.

‘Uh, yeah.’

‘With a note attached saying “child support”?’

‘Yes,’ he admits.

The girl frowns, and it makes her nose crinkle. ‘Why were you doing that, may I ask?’

‘Because it was my mum’s cat that got yours pregnant. I’m cat-sitting for her and I felt, you know…bad about it.’

She gives him a funny look. ‘But how could you know that it was your cat?’

‘They’re the only two cats on the street,’ Fitz explains. ‘So, unless yours is a bit of a roamer…’

‘…it could only have been yours.’ The girl finishes the sentence for him, nodding thoughtfully. ‘Well, Tiggy’s very much a homebody, so you must be right.’

Fitz nods back at her, rather more gloomily.

The girl sticks out her hand. ‘I’m Jemma, by the way.’

‘Fitz,’ he returns, taking her hand and shaking it.

‘Nice to meet you, Fitz.’ Jemma bends down and picks up the cat food. ‘And thank you for the child support.’ She smiles. ‘Would you like to come in and say hello?’

It takes Fitz a moment to realise what she means, and by the time he does he has already been grasped by the hand and tugged through the door.

‘Oh no,’ he says, a moment too late. ‘Oh no, I don’t think that I…’

‘Tiggy!’ Jemma calls warmly as she disappears into the living room, beckoning Fitz to follow her. ‘Look who’s popped by to see you!’

Swallowing hard, Fitz steps after her. Lying on a plush cat bed next to the fire place is a tabby cat with the same amber eyes as her mistress. Fitz feels a strong desire to shudder as he notices her swollen belly, and his skin begins to itch.

Pull yourself together, he scolds himself. It’s just a pregnant cat.

Gingerly, he lowers himself onto his knees beside her. Tiggy observes him with her large, unblinking eyes.

‘Um, hi,’ he says after a few moments. ‘Sorry about…’ he gestures vaguely to her stomach. ‘Well, this.’

Tiggy continues to stare at him and Fitz sits back on his heels, feeling a little bit of his guilt start to recede.

‘Here you go.’ Jemma appears behind him holding two mugs of tea, one of which she passes to him. ‘I didn’t know how you take it, so I just did the same as mine. Milk and one sugar?’

‘Perfect,’ Fitz says, taking a sip. ‘Thanks.’

‘No problem.’ Jemma sits cross-legged next to him and tickles Tiggy underneath her chin. The cat squirms with obvious pleasure. ‘You said you were cat-sitting for your mum?’

‘Yeah.’ Tentatively, Fitz reaches out to pat Tiggy on the head. She gives no indication of batting him off, so he progresses to a gentle stroke. ‘She won this cruise of a lifetime in one of her magazines, a six-month cruise around the world. It seemed easier for me to move into her place to look after Whiskers than move him into mine.’

‘Cats are very territorial,’ Jemma remarks. ‘Likelihood is, even if you had moved him he would still have found a way to return home.’

Glancing up, Fitz notices the stack of cat books next to the fireplace, each with multiple post-it notes sticking out through the pages. Evidently Jemma has done her research as a cat owner.

‘It was nice of you to take her in,’ he says. ‘Tiggy, I mean. Mum says she’d been a stray around here for a while.’

‘Mmm.’ Jemma nods. ‘She wasn’t chipped when I took her into the vets, so she must have been. It was an accidental adoption, though, if I’m being honest. I gave her some water and food one night and then she just kept coming back. Once I let her in the house, she made my decision for me.’ She rubs Tiggy’s ears fondly. ‘She’s a good girl, really.’

‘Let astray by a bad boy,’ Fitz adds.

Jemma laughs, and for some reason the sound sends butterflies tumbling through his stomach. ‘Yes, I suppose she was.’

‘Did the vet say how many kittens she was having?’ Fitz asks, feeling a little bolder now.

‘Three. Apparently that’s normal for a first litter, but she does seem rather big for it. The vet thinks she’s still got a few more weeks to go, though.’

Fitz nods sagely, as though he is some kind of expert on the gestation period of cats.

‘Thank you again for the cat food,’ Jemma says, and when Fitz looks up at her there is a twinkle in her eye. ‘It was very thoughtful of you.’

‘S’okay,’ Fitz says with a shrug. ‘I kind of felt like I ought to take some responsibility for Whiskers’ actions, since I’m responsible for him. And he wasn’t about to come around and apologise himself, now, was he?’

Jemma laughs again, and Fitz starts to wonder whether it is possible to fall in love with a single sound.

He eventually leaves more than an hour later with a plastic tupperware box of homemade chocolate biscuits under his arm, after promising to return later in the week to see how Tiggy was doing. He is sitting at his kitchen table, munching happily on a mouthful of biscuit, before the realisation hits him that he has accidentally assumed responsibility for four more cats, all in a single afternoon.

 

‘Fitz…’

With a deep sigh, Fitz rolls onto his side and tucks his duvet up under his chin. He is still mostly asleep, but the sound of his name, being called in a soft voice that sounds almost like Jemma’s, has brought him to the brink of consciousness.

In the past few weeks, he has become very well acquainted with Jemma’s voice. He visits her and Tiggy almost every evening after he finishes work and often stays for dinner, happily eating whatever Jemma places in front of him since it is a welcome alternative to the lukewarm ready meals sitting in his fridge.

There is something about Jemma that makes Fitz feel a way he has never felt before. It is not just the fact that they talk to each other, so easily and about everything. It is not just the way that she laughs, each time tugging more at his heart-strings than the last. There is something more, something in the warmth of her eyes and the gentleness of her fleeting touches that leaves Fitz thinking about her long after he has returned home.

‘Fitz.’

And now, apparently, she is sneaking into his dreams too. Fitz wonders what he is dreaming about to make her sound so exasperated.

‘Fitz!’

This last hiss is accompanied by a pummel from a pillow and Fitz’s eyes snap open. Jemma is kneeling on the bed next to him, another pillow poised to hit him again. He yelps and scrambles upright, pulling his duvet up to cover his chest even though he is perfectly decent.

‘ _Bloody hell, Jemma_! How did you get in here?’

‘You gave me a key,’ she says calmly, and Fitz suddenly remembers that he did, in case of emergencies. He has a copy of hers too, tucked carefully into his sock drawer.

Very aware that he is sitting in front of Jemma in his pyjama top and boxers, Fitz tries to look a little more awake. He runs his fingers through his hair and wipes the sleep from his eyes.

‘What, ah, are you doing here? At,’ he squints through the darkness at his bedside clock, ‘ten past one in the morning? Is something wrong?’

‘Yes,’ Jemma says, and for the first time Fitz notices how sheepish she looks. Like him, she is in her pyjamas, with a woolly cardigan buttoned over the top. ‘Oh, Fitz, I’m so sorry to arrive unannounced, but the kittens are coming.’

Fitz stares at her. He remembers how Tiggy had looked the night before when he’d been around, fatter than ever and hissing whenever he got too close for comfort. Jemma had mentioned that it wouldn’t be too far off now, but Fitz had never imagined it would happen in the middle of the night. Or, that he’d be awoken to be informed of it.

‘Uh…okay.’

‘Fitz…’ Jemma sighs, and sits down heavily on the bed. ‘I need your help,’ she says bluntly. ‘I’ve never done this before. The vet gave me some advice, of course, but the reality is rather different now I’m staring it in the face.’

Fitz gulps. Jemma looks at him beseechingly, and he can see the anxiety in her eyes. It pulls at him, seeing her that vulnerable.

‘Please?’ she asks in a whisper.

Fitz sighs and reaches across her to flick on his bedside lamp.

‘Give me five minutes.’

 

Exactly five minutes later, he is following Jemma into her own bedroom. Tiggy’s bed has been moved to the foot of Jemma’s and she gives him a low, indignant meow as he crouches beside her. Fitz nods at her, hoping she will understand this as some kind of solidarity.

‘Do you, um, have some towels? And hot water?’

Jemma peers at him inquiringly from the en-suite bathroom. ‘Beg pardon?’

‘I’ve seen Call the Midwife, Jemma,’ Fitz says, loftily. ‘I know how these things usually go.’

‘Fitz, those are _human_ babies. Not cat babies.’ Jemma returns from the bathroom and sinks to her knees beside him. She throws him a fond but despairing look. ‘I have some towels, yes, but we won’t need to clean the kittens. Tiggy will want to do that herself.’

‘Oh. Okay.’ Trying not to reveal himself to be too relieved, Fitz nods. ‘So, what’s our role here, then?’

‘To help her if she needs it,’ Jemma tells him, taking a sheet of paper from her desk. ‘I made some notes, about what we should look out for to know if anything is going wrong. And our vet’s number is at the top of the sheet.’

She exhales deeply, her hands clasped underneath her chin. Fitz’s fingers itch to reach out and touch her knee and, after a minute or two of half-hearted resistance, he gives in.

Jemma’s skin is warm underneath her thin pyjama bottoms and Fitz finds himself rubbing her knee with his thumb in a comforting manner. She gives a small start when he first touches her, but then seems to relax. Her shoulders sag and her hands come down to rest on top of his.

When Fitz licks his lips, he finds that they are quite dry.

‘What happens now then?’ he whispers.

Jemma shrugs, and stretches out a hand to stroke Tiggy’s ear.

‘We wait,’ she says simply.

 

It is not long before Fitz realises quite how wrong he had been in his assumption that the night would play out like an episode of Call the Midwife.

To begin with, the birth is not conveniently over in a few television minutes. Instead, it takes long hours. The night stretches on, and every time Fitz glances up at Jemma’s bedroom clock, it feels like the hour hand is on yet another number. He gets pins and needles in his feet and has to uncross his legs.

Tiggy is also a much quieter labouring mother than the ones on the show. She gives a few mournful meows every so often, with reproachful looks in Jemma’s direction, but otherwise she is silent. Despite this, it is clear to Fitz that she is very uncomfortable, and he can’t help but feel another stab of guilt for letting Whiskers put her in this predicament. He makes a mental note to take his cat to be neutered as soon as possible.

It is a quarter past three when Tiggy’s first kitten makes his way into the world. As soon as he’d realised it was about to happen, Fitz had quickly averted his eyes and he looks back only when Jemma gives a soft gasp.

‘Fitz, _look_!’

Tucked by Tiggy’s side is a small, damp lump of fur, already being resolutely licked by his mother. The kitten’s tiny limbs flail as he is cleaned, and in spite of himself, Fitz finds the corners of his mouth tugging upwards at the sight. In his lap, Jemma squeezes his hand, her eyes alight.

‘One down,’ she says.

‘And two to go,’ Fitz murmurs.

In between the births of the first and second kittens, Jemma dives down to the kitchen for supplies. She comes back with two steaming mugs of hot chocolate and a plate piled with warm, buttery toast that Fitz eagerly digs into.

He pauses, with the slice half-way to his lips.

‘She won’t find this insensitive, will she?’ he asks, nodding towards Tiggy who is beginning to give lowing meows again. ‘I wouldn’t want to do anything to put her off.’

Jemma grins as she sits down beside him, her shoulder close enough to brush against his. ‘No, Fitz,’ she says, affectionately. ‘Us eating toast is highly unlikely to put my cat off giving birth.’

‘Good,’ Fitz mumbles as he takes a large bite. ‘I’m bloody starving.’

The second kitten is born just before four in the morning, smaller than her older brother but far wrigglier; Tiggy has to put a firm paw across her body to lick her clean. After this, things seem to slow down considerably. Tiggy gives no sign of beginning to labour with the third kitten and both of the ones by her side latch on to feed. On the floor beside her, Fitz and Jemma exchange anxious looks.

‘Could the vet have been wrong?’ Fitz questions. ‘Maybe there were only two.’

‘I mean, it’s always a possibility,’ Jemma says, a deep frown etched into her forehead. ‘But he did a scan and seemed so sure, plus she was so _big_ for there to only be two…’

‘Are you sure it wasn’t the toast?’

‘Urgh, _Fitz_!’

They hover uncertainly about her, and Jemma is just contemplating ringing the vet when Tiggy gives a pained sound, and they both sink back to the ground with matching sighs of relief. The third and final kitten is on the way.

She takes her time, however, and when Fitz’s eyelids start to itch he allows them to close, promising himself it will only be for a minute. But when he starts awake again, there is a thin strip of pale golden light showing through the curtains, telling him that the sun is just about to rise.

He tries to stretch his limbs but is prevented by a heavy weight lying on his chest. Glancing down, Fitz feels his heart jump into his mouth. Jemma has fallen asleep between his legs, her head tucked underneath his chin and her hand resting on his waist. She is breathing deeply, the slight lines on her forehead smoothed by sleep as the dawn light dances on her freckles. Fitz doesn’t think he’s ever seen someone so beautiful.

An irate meow draws his attention back to Tiggy’s bed, where he is disappointed to see that two balls of fluff have not become three while he was sleeping. Tiggy’s tail thumps the bed, her bright eyes fixed on him.

‘Sorry, old girl,’ Fitz mumbles to her. ‘But it’s been a long night, you know?’

Tiggy gives him a look as if to say: _you think?_

‘Sorry,’ Fitz says again, rubbing his eyes. ‘Of course, you do. Do you, ah…think you’re going to be much longer now?’

Tiggy meows, which Fitz takes as a plea not to rush her. He holds up a hand in surrender and sits back to wait.

The sun has fully risen by the time the third kitten is born. Fitz exhales slowly, making Jemma’s hair bristle underneath his chin. He gives Tiggy a silent thumbs-up, hoping she understands what this means. She meows with slightly less bad temper than she had before, and directs her attention to tidying up her newest arrival.

Carefully, Fitz brushes the hair back off Jemma’s face.

‘Jemma? Wake up.’

She yawns and stretches, momentarily snuggling deeper into his chest before pulling herself upright and gazing up at him. Her eyes are still hazy with sleep as she smiles at him, and Fitz finds himself smiling back as something warm blooms inside his chest.

He nods to Tiggy.

‘We’ve got all three,’ he says softly.

Jemma follows his gaze and sees all three bundles of fur curled up beside their mum. Her smile grows even wider, and when she turns back to him Fitz knows that he would help birth a hundred kittens just to have her look at him like that again.

 

Over the next few weeks, Fitz’s life takes on a decided routine. After work, he drops his bag back home and lets Whiskers out into the garden, before locking the door and heading round to Jemma’s. Once there, he is sucked into the all-encompassing world of kitten rearing for the new arrivals – Rupert, Sophie and Phoebe.

Some parts of this are more pleasant than others, like the cuddling necessary for socialisation. Fitz enjoys this far more than he does supervising feeds, which starts to happen once the kittens are four weeks old.

‘Are you sure – OUCH! Rupert, that was my ankle – are you sure that they’re ready for this, Jemma?’

Fitz detaches one kitten from his trousers and places him back with the others on the floor. He peers across the kitchen where Jemma is mixing a bowl of kitten gruel for their three hungry mouths. She has her hair tied back in a ponytail so that it bobs over her shoulder when she nods.

‘Positive. In fact, they might be a little overdue moving onto solid foods. Most of the books say weaning ought to begin at three weeks. We indulged them,’ she says ruefully, catching his eye over the kittens’ heads, ‘letting them feed from Tiggy for so long.’

Fitz tuts as she places the dish on the floor. ‘That’s poor parenting, Simmons.’

‘Oh, I know. We’re a disgrace.’

He grins, and Jemma dips her finger into the gruel. She holds it up to Phoebe’s nose and lets her sniff it, before encouraging her to lick. Phoebe gives a tiny mewl of protest before deciding that, actually, it is not so bad after all. Once their sister has begun to lap up from the bowl, Rupert and Sophie do too and within a few minutes all three kittens are drinking intently.

Flashing Fitz a victorious smile, Jemma wipes her hand on her jeans and gives a slight jerk of her head, indicating that they could move into the living room now. She falls onto the sofa with a sigh, and Fitz follows her, accidentally displacing Tiggy. She glowers at him, before stalking off into the kitchen, her tail held high.

And then, just like that, he and Jemma are alone. This is an unusual occurrence; over the last month he has rarely had the chance to speak to her without one or other of them holding a cat in either hand. Just because their lives have been so centred on the kittens, however, does not mean that Fitz has been thinking about her any less. In fact, ever since the night they were born and she’d fallen asleep against him, he has found himself thinking about her even more.

‘Just four more weeks,’ Jemma says quietly, her eyes still trained on the three silhouettes lapping gruel in the kitchen, ‘and then they’ll be ready to leave Tiggy.’

A little shock of surprise runs down Fitz’s spine.

‘You’re not going to keep them?’

She shakes her head, sadly. ‘No, I can’t. Tiggy’s plenty for me. And I don’t think your mum will want to keep them either.’

Fitz grimaces. ‘Not while she’s still got Whiskers, he’s not likely to appreciate the company. He hasn’t exactly been the most involved father, has he?’

The ghost of a smile passes over Jemma’s lips. ‘No, he hasn’t.’ She reaches out and links her fingers through his. ‘But don’t worry, Fitz. We’ll find them all good homes, I promise.’

Fitz nods, disappointment heavy in his gut, and bites his lip. The thought of the kittens being gone, and with them his excuse to visit Jemma every evening, makes him feel like a deep hole has been carved out of his chest.

‘I know I’ve said this before,’ he says after a moment or two, ‘but I really am sorry for all this. If I hadn’t let Whiskers out at night, you’d never have had all this bother.’

Jemma turns her head to him. ‘Fitz, I told you. It’s not been a bother, truly. In fact…’ Here, she pauses, fidgeting in her seat. ‘I’m actually rather grateful to you.’

It takes a moment for her words to register. Fitz blinks.

‘You’re _grateful_ that I let my mum’s cat get yours pregnant?’

‘In a way,’ Jemma says coyly.

She twists so that she is sitting facing him and touches the back of his hand, still threaded through her own in his lap. The lightness of her touch, combined with the sudden softness in her eyes, makes an excited shiver run down Fitz’s spine. He sucks in a breath as Jemma meets his gaze and begins to wonder whether maybe, just maybe…

‘After all,’ she continues, with only the slightest tremor to her voice, ‘if it hadn’t been for Whiskers…I’d never have met _you_.’

She inclines her head towards his, and Fitz closes his eyes as she kisses him.

It is the same feeling he had felt waking up to her asleep on his chest, golden light flickering over her face, magnified by a thousand. Jemma’s lips are soft and sweet and fit against his own as perfectly as puzzle pieces.

Fitz feels his heart skip a beat as Jemma deepens the kiss, and when she brings her hand up to cup his cheek he lifts her across his lap so that she is straddling him. Jemma’s lips crease into a smile against his own as he kisses her back and her fingers lace through his hair, pulling them even closer together.

‘In which case,’ Fitz says, a little breathlessly, once they pull apart, ‘you’re welcome.’

Jemma snorts with laughter, and tugs on his collar to bring him back to kiss her again. Fitz obliges, enjoying the way her lips are already beginning to feel familiar to him, and makes a mental note to give Whiskers an extra treat that night.

Never in his life did he ever think he’d be this grateful to a cat.

 

 


End file.
